Hi listers,
a long time ago I asked people here for advice on good and bad children's
web sites.
Here's the summary I promised. (Please forgive the delay; new baby; new
book; vacation ..)
.................
nick.com (nickelodeon)
http://www.yahooligans.com/ (The yahoo kids site - check out their privacy
statement: http://www.yahooligans.com/docs/privacy/)
This page on building sites for kids looks interesting:
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Graphics/Kids/
I suppose there are two angles - sites that want to advertise to kids (boo!
as far as I'm concerned - a bit unethical) or sites that want to help
educate (hooray! - the internet doing what it was made for). A lot of sites
are a mixture of the two I guess.
I'm sure lots of people see educational web sites as an extension of the
lucrative educational software market...
.................
I don't know if it's usable, but whatever they're doing on Neopets
certainly has my kids hooked. I've never really sat down to evaluate it on
its usability aspects.
Yahoolilgans also seems to "work" for kids.
.................
www.nick.com
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/http://www.barbie.com/http://disney.go.com/park/bases/kidsbase/today/flash/index.html
Personally I think the barbie site is a great kid site.but check out the
Polly pocket site too, a sister site
to barbie.com it's neat because it give you verbal instructions!
http://www.pollypocket.com/home.asp
.................
http://www97.intel.com/scripts-tji/index.asp
................
look at kidshealth.org--a health info site for kids,
teens, and parents.
.................
I hit www.pokemon.com last night for my son. I found that it had a lot of
information on the site but loaded at a horrendously slow pace. This is a
really bad experience for a children's site as the target market wants the
information quickly.
I have noticed slow load times to be a consistent theme on sites that are
for kids and don't have a solution for them.
Some examples: www.pbs.org, www.disney.com.
...................
If you were a kid, would you know how to begin playing with all this neat
stuff? Or would go away confused?
http://www.highlights.com/
...................
My 7 year old really likes the "toon disney" site --
http://disney.go.com/DisneyChannel/toondisney/
They have a variety sites including a subscription
service called "disney blast" --
The following is the latest and greatest that my
daughter loves for the activities -
http://disney.go.com/disneychannel/playhouse/stanley/
Note, I find that her biggest usability problem is
when she "leaves" a site unknowingly and can't get
back to "fun" site -
................................
My 3 year old enjoys:
NickJR
Cbeebies (on bbc.co.uk)
BBC.co.uk walking with dinosaurs
BBC.co.uk walking with beasts
PBS
Google image search (type in t-rex, Mommy!)
Hates:
Disney - he needs mom or dad to find the games even after he's been there a
few times
Usability problems:
I've been amazed at how capable Karl is at learning where to click to get
what he wants, even when he doesn't read yet. But big buttons and arrows do
help.
The things that kill him are pop-ups. They start layering over the relevant
window and things get lost. His ability to manage multiple windows is not
as good as his ability to follow links. He also wants to maximise windows,
and often if multiple links on a page fill the same pop-up window with new
content, then the old pop-up doesn't come to the front and it looks like
nothing happened.
.................
www.think.com
.................
http://www.bankofamerica.com/creditcards/index.cfm?template=cc_visabuxx.cfm&
Click the teen link to get to teen site at
https://bankofamerica.visabuxx.com/index.cfm?pageid=B201&origid=bofa&s=BACCE
C0102
.....................
This is the most poignant suggestion: http://www.itsnotyourfault.org/
If anyone has anything further to point out, please mail me off list. I'd
love to hear from you.
regards, and thank you
bruce
Bruce Lawson
commissioning editor
www.glasshaus.com
see "Constructing Accessible Web Sites"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151000/
see "Usability: The Site Speaks For Itself" with case-studies from the
makers of eBay (TM), BBC News, Economist.com, Synfonts.com, MetaFilter.com,
evolt.org
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151035/
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